Beauty and Brawn Part 2

This video is brought to you by Babbel. Learn a new language through real-life conversations. We've all seen it time and time again, splashed across newspapers, magazines, and all over the internet. Instances where the best of intentions go horribly, horribly wrong and result in abject failure. Such was the case for this painting, entrusted to an individual who had no business touching paintings or practicing conservation. And the result speaks for itself. Upon first glance, it doesn't look that bad. But as we get closer, there is an eerie flatness about the entire painting. We can see little paint loss through the top layer of paint, and everything looks smooth, almost as if the entire painting has been coated. And that's exactly what happened. This painting was treated like a paint by numbers, and just about every surface was repainted, without delicacy, without sensitivity, and without care for that being comprehensively wrong. As we look at this painting closer, we can see just how flat it is, and how devoid of sensitivity and artistic expression it is now. On the back, it's no better. A series of rudimentary patches, presumably for some small tears or holes that could otherwise be repaired. A crude strip lining and staples, and the best part, a signature of the individual who did the work. To say this painting was poorly treated doesn't begin to express the frustration. This painting has been butchered. All delicacy and sensitivity of the artist has been compromised and lost, and the painting is a caricature. Without a doubt, this painting is now an art restoration fail. I mean what the f*** happened here? This is f***ing work. This is just f***ing work. Who the f*** did this? I can't f***ing tell this is f***ing work. You know, when I first started learning a foreign language many years ago, I'll be honest, I did so because I wanted to learn all of the fun words. 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So when you're ready to prepare for that vacation, connect with loved ones, or just challenge yourself, head over to Babbel, where you can get 60 percent off on your subscription by clicking the link below. My task for this project is to somehow figure out how to reverse and unwind all of this catastrophic damage, and then to assess the painting and figure out some way of putting it back together. But success here is not a foregone conclusion. Because we just don't know what lies beneath all of this excessive overpainting, we can't be certain that there is a face, and if there is, how much of it is left over. These are the questions that exist when dealing with a project like this, and it takes some faith of the client to pursue this conservation. Because underneath all of this overpaint, well, that's a mystery. Certainly we can do better with the structural work, and yes, we will do better with the image, but we just don't know what lies ahead. The technical work starts by removing this painting from the stretcher, by pulling out all of these staples, and then removing the stretcher from the painting. Once all the staples are removed, it's fairly easy to pull this stretcher off and reveal the back. Now all of this strip lining needs to come off because it's not actually good and it's not helping. But we have to figure out how to do that. At first, I see if I can just peel it back, but the adhesive is incredibly strong, and so it requires the application of a solvent to soften up and dissolve that adhesive. Luckily, this adhesive is responsive to the solvent that I've chosen, and it does come up fairly easily. This is the first of what I hope are many, many positive outcomes for this painting, but I'm not counting my chickens just yet. The same goes true for the patches. After applying some solvent and letting it penetrate through the canvas to the adhesive, I can peel off these patches and see the actual damage. These are small tears and they can be fixed without patches. After making some tests, I think I've come up with a novel solution for removing this adhesive that's all over the back of the canvas. The simple application of a solvent doesn't remove it, it just kind of makes it sticky and tacky. And so once it's tacky, I'll use my scalpel to scrape up a bit, and then I'll just take my hand and rub across the surface. And as I do so, you can see it starts to come up in little balls. And those little balls are really sticky and gooey, and they help remove any residue that's still on the canvas. It takes a lot of time, but ultimately it works. Now unfortunately for me, this is not an ideal solution. I don't like having my skin directly exposed to these solvents, and all of the friction is wearing down my fingertips. But this is the best approach. Like I said, I tried many others and I just couldn't get all of the adhesive off to a degree that I was happy with. So, a lot of slow work. But sometimes that's how conservation goes, and one must be creative in the face of a challenging project, whether it's a new tool, a new material, or a new technique. And I think that's what makes a good conservator. Now, when it comes to the inscription written on the back in permanent marker by the person who did this, well, I am all too happy to see this disappear. Luckily, by rubbing over the surface, all of the permanent marker does lift off, and I'm left with a canvas that is now free of this scarlet letter. After a lot of painstaking work, the back is free of all of that added material. And it is now that I can start trying to clean off all of this excessive overpaint. After making numerous tests and formulating a solvent mixture that will soften up this overpaint, I can start to remove it. This overpaint was applied in 2013, so not very long ago, and oil paint takes a long time to cure. You can see just how actually easy it comes up with the right solvent mixture. And this solvent mixture isn't damaging or attacking the underlying paint, because that layer is fully oxidized and polymerized. It is much, much older, and so it's much more stable when exposed to this solvent. The new oil paint just hasn't had enough time for the oil to fully oxidize, and so it is receptive to this solvent. And luckily for me, because if this overpaint were really tenacious and really difficult, I may have to have a very, very difficult conversation with my client. But luckily, at least thus far, it looks like I will be spared of the worst of it. It was pretty remarkable how little damage there was to this painting, and just how excessive that old overpainting was. I am incredibly happy with these results thus far, and I think that success is definitely within reach. But first, the painting needs to go onto the hot table to address some of the cleaner distortions. The cracks, the wrinkles, the ripples, and the waves in the canvas. Through the application of moisture, heat, and pressure in a controlled environment, I can affect change that I want. And the canvas will be smooth and free of these distortions once this treatment is complete. After bringing the painting up to temperature, turning on the vacuum pump, and extracting all of the air, allowing it to cool with the heat off, I can remove the painting from this envelope and transfer it over to the table where it'll be pressed for a few days and allowed to acclimatize to the studio's relative humidity. After resting for a little while, I can start on the structural repairs. Remember there were a few patches that were covering up some little tears? Well, I'm going to do a technique to repair those tears that doesn't require applying a massive patch. I'm going to be using the bridging technique. And so I've taken some of my strip lining canvas, that Belgian linen, and I've cut some threads off of it. I'm now applying a little bit of conservation adhesive across that tear, and then using a little dental tool and my hands, I'm going to be laying down those little strands of Belgian linen across the tear, much like a doctor would suture, but in this case I'm not stitching into the canvas. These are just on the surface, and they'll hold that little tear tight and prevent it from opening up and distorting in the future. And this is a really lightweight, minimal approach. You can see just how little material I've added, and it doesn't obscure the original canvas. So once I've applied the bridging, I can then use a little bit of silicone release film and a piece of felt, and then a weight to press it for a few days. And then that tear will be stabilized. Once I remove the weights from the bridging, I can check to see if they're looking good, and they are. They're flat, they're smooth, and there's no distortion. This painting did have a strip lining, and I'm gonna have to add another one, because the tacking edges just don't have the fidelity to support the canvas. In fact, in one section, the tacking edge is almost missing completely. And this starts by ironing on an adhesive film, and then coming back with my Belgian linen, which is frayed on the edges to avoid creating a hard, crisp line, and my iron. As I work across the painting, I'm using my weight with a clapper, a piece of red oak attached to the back, to absorb any of the ambient moisture that's created with the application of heat. This prevents distortion. And then I'm ready to put the painting back on the support. But first, I need to stabilize the support, because as you saw, it's a little rickety. And if I don't, it's going to move around, go out of square, and generally be a hassle. So nailing the corners square allows me to keep it rigid and stable as I handle it. I prefer to use tacks rather than staples, and because this canvas isn't interleaved, and because it's soft and flexible, I do need to stretch this with tension. So I'll use my hands or my pulling pliers to nail in a couple of tacks in the center of each edge, and then add some baseline tension. I'm not going for drum tight. What I am looking to do is take up any slack or distortion that's in the canvas. And then I can start to work my way through the rest of the stretching process. But because I notice that there is some slack, I'm going to do something that's different than what I normally do. And I'm going to pull the corners taut, so that they don't have any slack. And then I'm going to drive in a nail. You can see, now they're really taut. Once I drive that nail in, that edge will be tight and free of distortion. You can see it again here. As I pull the canvas, it becomes tight. Then I will work on the edge opposite the side that I just tensioned. And this is just a little trick that allows me to keep tension on the entire painting while I'm stretching it, rather than just relying upon pulling any slack to the corners and then getting rid of it. Which is generally okay, but on some canvases that are really flexible, I just don't trust that approach. And I want to do something that has a little bit higher guarantee. And this is it. Once all the stretching is complete on that one side, I can pull out the tack and then continue on the side that didn't have the corners pulled taut. And then the stretching is just about complete. I'll fold under the edges so that there's no chance of them coming loose or fraying, drive in a couple more tacks, and then I am done with stretching. Well, almost. I still have to clean up the back and get rid of all of this slack canvas. In order to finish up the back, I'm going to cut the canvas at the corners so that there isn't so much material that it becomes bulky and unwieldy. And once I've trimmed off all of those, I'll remove the nails that I drove in to keep the stretcher square. Again, those need to come out. They were just temporary. And then using a lighter weight tack, just a smaller tack, I will go through, fold over the canvas edges, and then hold it in place with the tack. I think this looks great. I don't have to glue anything down, and it's easier to remove in the future for the next conservator if they so choose. As I did with the canvas when I completed the stretching process with the back, I'm also going to fold it in and tuck it under. And this, again, ensures that that corner is tight and that the canvas doesn't fray or come loose as the painting receives tension with the keys. Now, speaking of the keys, I had to cut new ones because the original ones were completely lost. And I'm going to put them into the mortises and then hammer them down. And this is going to expand the stretcher just a little bit so that there's added tension. I don't want these to become loose or get lost, so I'm going to take a little piece of fishing line and then add another tack and tighten them and bind them in place. If they ever do come loose, they won't fall in between the canvas and create a dent. And with that last key in place and the fishing line cut, the canvas is ready for fill-in and retouching. I mentioned how surprised I was at the lack of damage, but there is some, and we do need to address that. Anywhere where the painting was torn or there's paint loss, I have to fill it in so that I have a smooth and even surface to retouch onto. I'll apply the fill-in medium and then I'll just use my fingers to rub off the excess. And then once it's dry, I'll come back with a little swab and some water and I'll just lift off any of the residue. I don't want this to remain because it will look no good and it's just not necessary. And we're trying not to do things that aren't necessary here. There aren't major areas of loss that need to be filled in, but they do need to be filled where there are losses. Because if I don't, then even if I match the color correctly, the divot will still be present and catch the light, and that would betray good retouching. I'll move across the entire painting maybe two times, maybe three times, as many times as necessary to remove all of this haze. And then once I'm ready to start the retouching process, I'll use another solvent mixture and I'll coat the entire surface to lift off all of that remaining residue and also to give me an idea of what the painting might look like when it's fully completed. I cannot express how happy I was to find underneath all of that excessive overpaint, a beautiful painting. One that was free of damage. I fully expected a Herculean task in putting this piece back together, only to find that really there's not much damage at all. There are a few chips and nicks and scrapes and a couple of areas where it looks like the paint has been abraded, but by and large this is one of the easiest retouchings that I have done in a very, very long time, which is a welcome change. Particularly on this painting. And as I go through and just hit all of those little areas, it's really, really evident that I didn't even need to do all of this retouching. Now I am nitpicking and making sure that every little spot is taken care of, but had I left the painting just as it was, it would have been acceptable to most people. And it just boggles the mind, because I don't know why somebody would choose to overpaint the entire piece. Either they just didn't know what conservation was, or more likely they just got carried away. And it's easy to get carried away. We all do it. I've done it on retouching in the past. The trick is, of course, recognizing that you're getting carried away and stopping before you can't turn back, which I think is what happened with this piece. They saw the kind of abraded or rough-looking face and figured they could do a little bit of retouching, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and then, well, we may as well make the lace look better, and then her hair look better, and then the background needs to be better. But bettering the painting by covering up the artist's original execution is not how conservation works. We better the painting by honoring the artist's work, by removing the damage and enabling their vision to shine through, not collaborating and creating some caricature of their artwork. Because there was so little retouching, I didn't feel it necessary to put an isolation layer on this painting, and so now I will just go ahead and varnish it. I've chosen to brush on the varnish this time, again, because there wasn't a lot of retouching, there isn't an isolation layer, and I think it's just the right approach. Sometimes I'll spray the varnish on, sometimes I'll hand rub it. Just depends on the effect that I want, and that's based on my experience of varnishing thousands upon thousands of paintings. The application of varnish is relatively simple. Put it on, move it around, and then leave it alone. Let it dry, it'll even itself out, and then you'll have a really beautiful finish that will make this painting look exquisite. When this painting arrived at the studio, one could have been forgiven for thinking that its future was in the trash can. It had been so heavy-handedly overpainted that any idea that underneath all of that old work was a painting full of delicacy and subtlety was almost as comical as the way it appeared. Yet by removing all of that overpaint, we have revealed a range of beautiful browns in the background that make it more than the flat color field that it was. The clothing that was solid black before has revealed colors that were absent. The entire painting now has a lighter feel, one that exhibits talent and mastery of the handling of paint. And though the painting is simple, without extensive rendering or complex brushwork, it looks like itself and not a caricature. And no place is that more evident than in the face, which beforehand was an almost mask, devoid of expression and detail. But now we can see her bone structure. We can see the subtle shading and tonal variations that make up her skin. And most importantly, we can start to see her expression, who she was. And all of that was previously lost. But now, with the conservation complete and all of the sloppy, heavy-handed, and bad work gone, we can finally see her as she truly is. Let's take a trip back to when the painting arrived. Again, upon first glance, not so bad. But as we look more, we can start to see the lack of variation, particularly in her face. As we reveal the final product, well, it's clear that there is a very big difference. And the painting has a lighter, more natural feel that was completely missing before. But this painting didn't arrive alone. It arrived with a companion piece, this woman's husband. And he, too, was poorly conserved, though not to the degree that she was. He, too, underwent comprehensive restoration. And he, too, now looks exponentially better. These two paintings, which beforehand were cartoons, caricatures, and embarrassing to display, are now ready to go back up on the wall and be appreciated and viewed as they always should have. Join me over on Patreon, where my entire video catalog is available ad and sponsor-free. And I take questions and answer them in follow-up epilogue videos for each project. And something tells me the epilogue for this project is going to be interesting.